Lonely
by Antonia-x
Summary: KateBettany; AU, slight Kate/Jed one-shot.


**Turns out an advert can take my mind to very strange places; that and letting Kate speak is a very bad thing, because you can't sleep until you've got everything written down, this is actually the first thing I've gotten finished in a little while so let me know what you think. **

**This is for Callie, who apparently I distressed somewhat before she went to bed, and Meggi because they can in fact understand the need to write something even when you know that you should be asleep because you need to be awake in a matter of hours. **

**Enjoy!**

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As she pulled her quilt up around herself, and despite feeling so very tired, she knew that sleep would be impossible again tonight just as it had been for every other night that she'd spent in the old asylum - particularly since Jed had gate crashed his way back into her life. However thinking of Jed made nothing any easier, now it wasn't ghosts and spirits which plagued her mind at night, it was the memory of the person who seemed to have let them in to her head in the first place. The memory of the one person who understood why she couldn't sleep, why she woke in a corridor which had yet to be converted; however, when he'd disappeared so suddenly from her life the ghosts had faded with him.

Now instead of being kept awake by the eerie voices and sometimes spooky movements, it was an eerie silence that represented all that she'd lost which kept her eyes open despite how much her tired mind begged to sleep. She may never have seen a body but she knew in her heart that she'd lost Jed, and she knew equally that she'd never see him again. She'd concluded almost twenty-four hours previously that it would was much more distressing to understand that it was possible to see the dead. She reflected that it was unfortunate that he had been the one with the ability and not her; or perhaps it was unfortunate that he had died and not her. In spite of this she realised, despondently, that she had no idea had their positions be reversed whether Jed would even be happy to see her ghost, amongst the others he could see.

She felt the traitorous tears fill her eyes as she thought of Jed not ever wanting to see her again, she wondered briefly if he'd ever meant it when he'd said he loved her. They'd been sixteen and he'd pressed a fleeting kiss to her forehead and whispered in her ear softly before anyone else in the house had been up. She felt the tears begin to trickle down her face as she considered the possibility that Jed had never cared, as she reached up to wipe the tears away, her mind was pulled to the night when he'd dragged her from the bathwater; the night he'd smashed a wall in order to quash her fears - though that particular thought just prompted feelings of guilt. She threw the bed covers from her and stood up realising that sleep was not imminent she considered how she'd lost the only person she knew she'd ever offer her heart to, yet despite how much she knew she'd loved him and also reflected that she'd voiced it only once when she'd been just sixteen.

She made her way to the kitchen she found herself pondering the clear bottles all containing some form alcohol which were stood beside the fridge momentarily before her attention was captured by the collection of empty bottles by the bin. She sighed as she noticed the empty vodka bottle which had been the previous nights sleeping aid, even if it had resulted in her getting weepy, stumbling into the box room and curling up before passing out on the bed where Jed used to sleep and she'd awoken that morning feeling both nauseous yet somehow comforted by the sense of Jed's presence curled up next to her. She pulled at the unopened bottle of gin and opened the lid before filling the glass drying by the sink. She lifted bottle and glass and turning her attention to the photographs which she'd always found herself looking at in the early hours of the morning and sitting down the table.

She'd stopped wanting to look last night when she'd reached the photographs of herself and Jed which had been taken at her sixteen birthday party, it had been a very small family affair and had ended so very perfectly, not that she'd ever been allowed to share that particular feeling with anyone. She almost smiled at the image of her younger self as she recalled the event had ended with the small amount of family staying the night, through over consumption of alcohol she was sure, however she'd met Jed outside the bathroom and the boy just a few weeks her elder had wished her a happy birthday before bending down to kiss her cheek yet she'd turned to look at him properly and their lips had crashed together and as they had she'd felt such an intense feeling of love she was certain she'd never be able to let him go.

She spun her head slightly, and as she caught sight of the sofa by the window recalled the kiss they'd shared there, she could recount carefully all the kisses she'd shared with Jed over the years, and nothing had every come close to the intensity of the very first until their lips had found each other in this very apartment. She remembered sadly that she'd pulled away sharply, feeling unable to allow it to proceed as it had the night of her birthday when she'd led Jed to her bedroom knowing that he wouldn't hurt her even as she pulled him downwards onto the bed with her before offering him a reassuring smile. She thought about the way she'd felt waking up in his arms before he'd had to sneak back into the room next door, as she flicked through the remainder of the photographs not really taking the images in.

With the photographs back at the beginning and her memories stirred for the evening, she found herself filling the glass a final time before she stood up and padded back through to her bedroom glass in hand as she considered the likelihood of her sleeping that night. She opened the drawer at the side of her bed, and pulled the smaller make up bag from it, opening it and placing the contents on the bed beside her, the boxes of standard issue pain killers she'd allow anyone to see, however she found she was much more secretive about the bottles which declared her name.

She fingered the first bottle thoughtfully as she reflected that these particular pills, ones that she'd been prescribed after her father had sent her to see a friend she hadn't seen, neither professionally or at one her father's dinners, since she'd first seen him on a professional level aged just aged sixteen. She'd never considered herself to be a person who would ever work themselves into such a state that she would require to be medicated in order to relieve the horrific anxiety that she was certain the apartments were to blame for. Perhaps with all the horrors which the place held in it's history, both distantly and one - perhaps the one which had caused her the most pain - in the not so distant past, had been the reason for her complete disintegration in the office on the day after she'd last seen Jed. She knew the moments after it had happened so very quickly; her father had made a call and she'd been sent to his friend and she was unsure where the speediness of the entire event had been due to concern about her state of mind, or embarrassment that her state of mind was not entirely stable.

She pulled the second bottle, knowing that she'd only been prescribed these when she'd went to her own GP in a desperate attempt at gaining some independence from her father; she couldn't face explaining the true extent of her feelings but she'd felt comfortable enough to admit her insomnia and found herself prescribed sleeping tablets. They'd remained unopened until this moment as she vaguely wondered whether they'd actually be useful as she poured the small pills out onto her quilt. She found herself reaching for the third bottle and almost found herself laugh at how she'd acquired them, these had come from a doctor she'd met herself in a bar and after returning to her apartment with him she'd fallen apart upon seeing the picture of Jed on the fridge. She'd ended up in what was essentially a consultation with a man she'd intended on spending the night with, in an attempt to lessen the loneliness she'd been feeling. She unscrewed the lid and poured the contents on top of the ones already on her bed covers, and as she read the bottle one final time she realised that even she could appreciate the irony in her living the old asylum when so dependent on the anti-depressants. These were the pills she reflected she'd be most afraid of anyone finding out about, terrified of what they what say or might think about her.

She couldn't understand why she'd felt the need to unscrew the remaining bottle and let those pills join the ones on her bed, and she picked a handful before she stretched over the pick of the glass she'd brought with her from the kitchen. Though as she turned the picture of a smiling Jed and Molly seemed to taunting her and she'd retaliated by throwing the pills in their direction, hearing them bounce, some landing on her floor, others behind the drawers. She tugged her quilt further around herself and sipped at her drink, wincing at the bitter taste as she popped the first few pills into her mouth and found the motion therapeutic, and repeated it again and again, until she was beginning to feel dizziness threatening to overcome her, she fought against it and removed the covers from around her before putting the now empty glass back on the bedside cabinet.

The tiny room was making her head spin and if she was honest a little claustrophobic, and maybe she was lonely, not that she'd ever admit that to anyone - except maybe Jed yet she was sure he'd have already known, being in the same apartment that she, Molly and Ryan used to bring to life long before Jed had made his way there and brought it life in a very different way. She found herself suddenly desperate to escape from the fours walls she'd gotten to know so very well over the past weeks and pulled her night gown from the chair next to her, before she grabbed at the handful of pills which remained and poured them into a bottle, not caring that she was mixing them, and she'd probably never know what it was that she was taking if she had ever to face a dark night like this again but she wasn't certain it would matter; they all made her drowsy eventually. She stored the painkillers, the two empty bottles and the one barely filled one back into the delicate silk bag and placed it back in the drawer.

As she pulled her night gown tightly around herself she moved from the bed, and found herself instinctively closing her eyes tightly as she passed her full length mirror in fear of seeing her true reflection and not how she was envisaging herself as radiating her usual, yet somewhat decreasing, confident appearance. She'd never believed that her perfect, at least outwardly, life would ever spiral so very much out of control; however, she'd known from the tender age of just sixteen after one very illicit night with Jed, that it had the potential to do just that. Regardless of that knowledge she'd done everything within her power for the entirety of her life that in spite of how she was feeling her outward and very public appearance would never represent the mess that her head was in on that particular day. This innate need had been born when she was aged sixteen, the day following Jed's first spell in psychiatric care and she'd woken almost an hour earlier than she ever had needed before and had carefully applied every centimetre of her make up and restyled her hair twice in order to ensure that no one could ever guess that anything had affected her enough for her to show emotion.

She pulled the apartment door open and found the sudden darkness of the hallway appealing and she turned to locked the door before she let her feet guide her down the hallways of the old asylum and when she found herself pacing down a very familiar hallway she wasn't alarmed; not least because she'd awoken there for duration on Jed's stay in the apartment with her, but because she'd had a sudden desire to spend hours at a time sat in that same corridor. She knew how it would look to others, in fact she'd begun to wonder if she looked on it the same way in recent days and found that perhaps it may be the case but she did consider it to be her special place, the place where she could come and be alone and in those moments alone she could remember Jed. As she reached the very spot she realised that she liked the idea that he had somewhere, because if she couldn't have a grave stone to mark his passing she found it tranquil that she had some place to remember the only person she was certain she'd love forever.

Even with the redecoration and the eventual complete reconstruction she was still able to tell the exact place where Jed had broken the wall on her instruction, and as she allowed her self to slip down that very same wall, her hand had rested on the correct spot. She felt her eyes close sleepily and she was almost certain that as she was becoming overcome with darkness she had been able to see Jed, however as she let her eyes flicker open he was gone again and found that there was an odd comfort from being able to see him. She wasn't sure which pills were making her so very sleepy but she wasn't too bothered about technicalities like that because once again she closed her eyes and as everything became so very dark she was able to see herself getting closer and closer to a Jed who seemed less troubled than she'd ever seen him even as a child, and he stretched his arm out grapping her hand and pulling her into his arms. They stood in somewhere very bright as she snuggled into his shoulder now she was finally back in his arms, the feeling of loneliness suddenly quashed.

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**Thank you for reading, Anny x **


End file.
